In some of our recent Joomla templates like Newscycle and as far back as Rasa, you may have noticed that we implemented some subline styling ion the menu items. A design element that has gained a fair amount of attention and use from the design community in the last 12 months or so.

Up until now we have relied on a small modification to the awesome bbcode plugin from YV to do the heavy lifting. It always seemed like overkill to us to draw upon such a small part of that plugin's feature set and also add to the general memory load that comes with using multiple content replace plugins on a Joomla site, so a few weeks ago we decided to bundle those styles into our versatile and free JB Type plugin.

Our free Joomla extension CaptifyContent is now available for Joomla 1.6. If you haven't seen it before, Captify first made a splash on the front page of our Grid Joomla template and it is basically a module that can create a lovely grid layout for images from your content items or category images. The implementation in Joomla 1.6 has changed slightly so please make sure you read the docs on the Captify page for an update on how to use the category image option.

jFlickr is our free Joomla jQuery driven Flickr module - and it is now available for Joomla 1.6.

We have also updated the Joomla 1.5 version to fix an issue with jQuery 1.4+ and fancybox so if you are experiencing issues please grab the latest release of both JB Library and jFlickr and everything should be working swimmingly.

Our free jQuery system plugin - JB library - has just been updated to include the latest version of jQuery. jQuery v1.6.1 was released a little over a month ago but you can read about the new goodies and updates in the library on the official jQuery blog.

One of our most neglected Joomla extensions, Hoverbox, has just been recoded from the ground up and is now compatible with Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 1.6. Hoverbox was one of the extensions I cut my teeth on and I used it as a bit of a tool for learning when I first started working with Joomla. Unfortunately the module has laid a little dormant - that is until this past weekend when it received a whole lot of love and a much needed overhaul.

You can see an example of the Hoverbox in action on the Hoverbox overview page where you can also download the module for Joomla 1.5 or Joomla 1.6 for free.

Please note that this module also requires the JB Library to be installed.

We are gradually moving through all of our Joomla 1.5 Extensions and porting them across to Joomla 1.6 and today I am happy to announce that one of our gallery workhorses - prettyBox - is now available in Joomla 1.6 format.

PrettyBox is a simple to use module that generates a grid of thumbnail images from a folder that you specify. The module provides an assortment of display options and can display the full image in a lightbox gallery as well. For more information and download (for club members) please check out the prettyBox overview page.

Our Microblog Joomla module can now be used to create a lightbox video gallery using your K2 content. The module can now display the video that you specify in the K2 video tab within a colorbox lightbox.

K2 + Microblog

This is a flexible solution for creating a video gallery as you get to combine the power of the K2 componentwith the flexibility of the Microblog module. All of the "on page" display is controlled via the Microblog module which offers numerous layout types for displaying the content - Columns, Flat, Leading, Filtered, Maxbiz and New media. Each of those views also gives you control over the display of the k2 content, k2 images and titles.

Last time I checked there was no reliable or perhaps easy to use and style video gallery component for Joomla, (although that was sometime ago so please correct me in the comments if there is something out there that is easy to use and style). Microblog may well turn out to be the perfect interface for grabbing videos from K2 and displaying them in a gallery format.

I have just released the Joomla 1.6 version of JB Type which in the end only needed a few lines of code changed in order to make it compatible with Joomla 1.6. I have also pushed through some additions to the styles that will be used in the upcoming Element Joomla template which is due for release in the next day or so.

As you can see from the screenshot above I have added some lovely coloured disc styling that should be useful additions and pretty additions to this plugin. You can see the updated style list on the JB Type extension page - I hope you enjoy the new additions.

I've just rolled out the first of our Joomla 1.6 extension releases. First cab off the rank are the powerhouses behind our Joomla templates - JB Slideshow3 and Microblog - plus the popular and, might I say, very handy JB Library plugin.

The rest of the catalogue is also on the production line so it shouldn't be too long before we have the whole Joomlabamboo extension catalogue ported over to Joomla 1.6. I'm hoping to have jFlickr and jTweet out in the next few days and the rest should follow shortly after.